Out of The Woods by Patricia Bowmer Page B

cared.”
    She looked away. His words brought it all back, made it real in an unbearable way. She had told no one about that time, not even Fernando. She was crying again, and these tears were not healing. They were the crumbling away of some deepest part of her. Her spirit retreated, and she hugged herself to herself and tried to will his words away. But she couldn’t.
    She sat, staring into the water, moving his words in her mouth like bits of broken glass, rubbing them off her flesh, tasting their sharpness.
    The river narrowed, the rocky outcroppings becoming first small boulders, then large, dangerous ones. The boat picked up speed.
    Halley saw herself, deep down at the bottom of a featureless well, with her head sunk on her arms. From this place, she could look inside and know: she had been here before. She had heard the very words Trance had spoken before. She thought carefully, as the answer swooped away from her, and then swooped back into view with greater clarity.
    He had known where to strike. How had he known?
    The white water began to bubble and froth around the boat, and she pondered the eagle’s timely swoop. There was no coincidence here. Trance had seemed familiar because he was familiar; he was the darkness she had fought all her life.
    From deep within her, from an untouched, undamaged place, she felt herself arise again. Not a roaring or a gushing or even a bubbling. Certainly not visible to Trance as he seemed to luxuriate in the damage he had wrought; she did not stand up or even sit up taller. It was if she had removed his coat, and let the orange glow of her windbreaker show through, though she did not.
    The growing roar of the river awoke Trance from his reverie; he glanced up, his ice-blue eyes taking her in.
    She looked down. It was she who was facing the course of the river. Listening for the break in the roaring, for the lull, she waited. When she heard it, she glanced up quickly. The river was being split asunder by a smooth, blackened rock in the center of the white water. He glanced over his shoulder. They raced towards it, but Trance was smug, certain he could simply use his oar to steer them around.
    At the moment they came alongside the rock, Halley leapt to her feet, throwing all her weight outwards, away from the rock. The boat twisted, its bottom rising up from the river, lifting, flipping, like a salmon turned over going upriver. They were flung overboard, into the deep, frothing, turbulent water.

Underwater, Halley held her breath and began to swim. Got to stay under. Move towards shore. Let him drift downriver.
    The current was fast, and before she had got her bearings, she was swept unexpectedly into the sharp edge of a rock, scraping the skin off her knee. Her face clenched in pain, but she was careful not to cry out, not to open her mouth underwater and begin the process of drowning. She clenched her teeth and added force to her stroke, making her way cautiously through the swift water.
    Trance was all around her, as if he had become the sharp-edged rocks in the river, the water that threatened to drown her. Maybe it was because of his jacket – she noticed the weight of it suddenly – it was like he was still grasping her by the shoulders and pressing her down. She stopped swimming and struggled out of it. Once off, the greedy waters sucked the jacket swiftly away. Without it, her remaining clothes felt powerfully buoyant.
    Just a few more moments underwater…a few more strokes. Pulling hard, she drew herself away from the spot where she’d tipped the boat.
    Finally, in desperation for a breath, she shot to the surface. She sucked in air hungrily, at the same time searching the river for Trance, her body poised to duck back under. She imagined his face, compressed with fury.
    From the corner of her eye, she felt rather than saw the movement. The light of the sun was suddenly blocked, as some shadowy thing hurled towards her, fast. She had no time to react. Something struck